If you’ve been working out 3 day per week, bumping it up to 4 days per week can be an excellent way to challenge yourself.
Or, if you simply have 4 days throughout the week you can make it to the gym and prefer to perform a full body style of training, a 4 day full body workout routine is a perfectly fine way to accomplish your goals.
Some may be worried that 4 days of full body training may be too much and prevent recovery. While this can certainly be true if you are not physically ready for such volume, some advanced lifters have been able to use full body workouts as many times as 6 days per week.
Recovery is important, and exercise selection when designing your 4 day full body workout routine is important.
In the rest of this article, we will show you a 4 day full body workout routine template. This is simply a template and should be manipulated in ways that better fit your individual needs.
4 Day Full Body Workout Routine Overview
When designing a 4 day full body workout routine, you will want to be strategic in your exercise selection.
This means including a variety of compound lifts with isolation lifts and attempting to avoid heavy compound exercise targeting the same movement pattern too close together within your workouts.
The days in which you decide to exercise will be entirely up to you and your individual schedule. However, it is recommended to get as much rest in between workouts as possible. This means that your 3 rest days per week should be placed in between your training sessions so that only two of your workouts are back to back throughout the week.
Here is an example weekly template:
4 Day Full Body Weekly Workout Split
- Monday: Full Body Workout 1
- Tuesday: Rest
- Wednesday: Full Body Workout 2
- Thursday: Rest
- Friday: Full Body Workout 3
- Saturday: Full Body Workout 4
- Sunday: Rest
By placing your two consecutive workout days on Friday and Saturday, you will have the rest of the weekend to focus on recovering before gearing up to go again Monday. This would be an ideal way to split your workouts if you work a traditional 9 to 5 Monday-Friday schedule.
Now that we know how to split your workouts up throughout the week, let’s take a look at what an example template would look like.
Full Body Workout 1
| Exercises | Set Range | Rep Range |
| Dumbbell Incline Bench Press | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Dumbbell Row | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Dumbbell Lunge | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| EZ Bar Overhead Tricep Extension | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Dumbbell Curl | 3-4 | 8-12 |
Full Body Workout 2
| Exercises | Set Range | Rep Range |
| Leg Press | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Lat Pull Down | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Dumbbell Shoulder Press | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Supermans | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Glute Bridges | 3-4 | 8-12 |
Full Body Workout 3
| Exercises | Set Range | Rep Range |
| Romanian Deadlifts | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Decline Hammer Strength Machine | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Dumbbell Lateral Raises | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Leg Extensions | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Hammer Curls | 3-4 | 8-12 |
Full Body Workout 4
| Exercises | Set Range | Rep Range |
| Dips | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Chin Ups | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Front Squat | 3-4 | 8-12 |
| Hanging Leg Raise | 3-4 | 10-15 |
| Planks | 3-4 | 30-90 Secs |
Final Thoughts on 4 Day Full Body Workouts
This split would be better suited for someone who identifies as an intermediate lifter. For your body to support this additional volume, it is important to have a solid base of muscular endurance and strength developed from a 3 day full body workout routine.
Rest periods between sets will depend on your goals and capabilities. A good goal to shoot for is 2-3 minutes between you heaviest compound lifts, 1-2 minutes between your moderate lifts, and 30-60 seconds between your isolation exercises.
A split such as this one can be performed for as long as you would like. If you are seeing great results a 4 day full body workout split, there is no need to change your training style after X number of weeks.
Progress with your workouts by making them more difficult over time. The easiest way to do this is by increasing the weight you use for the exercises you perform. Just ensure that you maintain proper and perfect form as you increase the weights you use.
If you have any questions about 4 day per week workouts or full body workouts, please feel free to drop a comment below!